


A Conscientious Man

by Violsva



Series: In a State of Marriage [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Menstruation, Menstruation Kink, Polyamory, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:24:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3752674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you in much pain?” he asked.</p><p>I sighed. There was no point in lying to him. “Well, I am.”</p><p>“What helps with it?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Conscientious Man

Normally my wife rose before me, and I would wake to find her dressing, or already downstairs, or perhaps making a passionate effort to rouse me. I was therefore extremely surprised when one morning, shortly after we had begun living together, she remained curled up beneath the blankets after I was already dressed.

“Mary?” I asked.

She peeked out from under the covers and smiled, though it looked more like a wince. “Good morning, John. I’m just a little under the weather today. Go on downstairs.”

“Are you ill?” I asked at once, coming closer.

“No,” she said, though she looked very pale. “Oh, John, it’s just my courses. Don’t worry over me.”

“Is there anything I can fetch for you? Does it always affect you like this?” I asked, thinking that as a doctor I should be past blushing about such matters.

“Usually, for a day or so. I don’t think there’s anything really to be done, dear. Put more coal on the fire, perhaps?”

I did so, then kissed her and went downstairs to the sitting room, where Holmes was reading the newspaper at the breakfast table.

For we were at Baker Street, of course. Mary Morstan had come to visit us, unannounced, shortly after the conclusion of her case, and elaborated on her acceptance of my proposal. I had not expected it at all, but I cannot be quite as sure of Holmes.

Either way, she had been correct in her supposition, and now Baker Street held all three of us, as well as our extremely tolerant landlady. So it was not strange when Holmes looked up from the agony columns and said, “Is Mary ill?”

“Not ill, exactly,” I said.

“No?” He frowned at me, clearly searching for an answer and not finding it. “What is wrong, then?”

“She’s merely indisposed.” I sat down and tried to eat.

“That’s not an answer, Watson.” There was, just possibly, a note of concern in his voice.

“It’s her cycle,” I said. This did not seem to help.

“Her what?”

I wondered again how much, or more likely how little, intimate contact Holmes had had with women before the introduction of Mary to our lives. I knew how much he’d had after, though, and that was far less than one would think – or, I admit, than I had hoped.

For now, I gave up on discretion. “She is menstruating. It’s causing her pain.”

“Oh,” said Holmes. Then, “Oh!”

I thought that would be the end of it, and devoted myself to my meal and what papers Holmes had finished with, trying to keep my mind from wandering further in that direction. He would notice. For I wanted to see Holmes with Mary.

He had watched, certainly, he had watched us until I could nearly see his thoughts behind his grey eyes and I came from just wondering what they were. He had kissed Mary, and that alone had been almost too much for me. Yet I wanted more.

I hoped again that my thoughts were not showing upon my face, as they so often did. It didn’t matter now, I supposed; Mary wouldn’t want anything in that way for some time.

Unusually, Holmes finished only a basic survey of the papers before he piled half the breakfast things back on the tray and disappeared with it. I nearly got up to follow him – I was used to some oddities from him, but they did not generally involve tidying. But he had left my breakfast, and I so rarely got the chance to look at the papers before he had scattered half of them across the room, and I decided he could not be up to too much mischief.

He was gone rather a long while, though, long enough that I started to wonder more seriously. Mary had not appeared either, though, which was more concerning, at least as long as there was no evidence of Holmes antagonizing our landlady.

*

I lay curled up on the bed, blankets piled on top of me, one wrapped as tightly around my waist as it could be. The pressure helped, and the position, but nothing truly could. I thought of sending for a hot water bottle later, when I felt more like standing, but they were awkward things and I didn’t know if I would be able to get its heat to where I needed it most.

Some time after John had gone down for breakfast – I really couldn’t tell how much – the door opened, and Sherlock entered, carrying a tray. Sherlock Holmes with a breakfast tray was not a sight I had ever expected to see before, and it was enough to pull me nearly upright in bed.

“Good morning,” he said. “Watson said you were unwell.”

“Yes,” I said, wondering if he’d said precisely _how_. Sherlock crossed the room and sat next to me, lowering the tray to the nightstand. “But you didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

“Tea?” Sherlock asked, lifting the pot.

“Yes, please.”

I sat back against the headboard and managed to eat and drink. Sherlock talked of little oddities he’d seen in the paper that morning, and what might be behind them. I had nothing to contribute – had little capability of thinking deeply at all then – but it was comforting.

When I set down my plate he turned to look at me with his most abstracted, thoughtful expression. “Are you in much pain?” he asked.

I sighed. There was no point in lying to him. “Well, I am.”

“What helps with it?”

“Heat and pressure, a little,” I said. “Distractions, if only I could focus on them. Laudanum.” I’d not intended to mention that. “Mrs. Forrester swore by Campbell’s Tonic, but it never worked for me.”

“It wouldn’t,” he murmured. “Is it a matter of muscular tension?”

“I – I suppose,” I said. I’d never thought of it that way before. “I think it must be. Why?”

“I was thinking,” he said, with a hint of a smile, “of ways of relieving muscular tension.”

It was such a very subtle hint that I did not realize what he meant at first. “You mean massage?” I asked hopefully. He had such lovely hands.

“Of a sort,” he said, smile growing. “More intimate, perhaps. I wonder if - well. If orgasm would help with your pain – it is supposed to be warming, and it would at least be a distraction.”

“Oh!” It had never occurred to me that anyone would want that.

“Only if you want it,” he said calmly.

“I – had not thought of it,” I said. I remembered, though, times when I had wanted – wanted _something_ there, while in pain, and touched myself to shift my focus to something other than the cramps. It had been a comfort, sometimes – never truly a pleasure, but the mere idea that Sherlock, of all people, might want to ease my pain enough for that was warming and a pleasure in itself. “But, yes.”

He smiled, and his eyes were bright with eagerness. I didn’t know why this was so enticing for him, but he certainly didn’t seem to just be offering it for my sake.

*

I had thought at the start that my pleasure from this arrangement would be purely intellectual. Though I liked and respected Miss Morstan, I did not anticipate her being an exception to my general incompatibility with women in such matters. I had in fact told her so.

But Watson had objected when I began by holding myself completely aloof, and asked in his own particularly difficult-to-refuse way. And I had been surprised by my interest in the two of them together.

I had never, however, expected an interest such as this.

We had arranged a towel underneath Mary’s hips to spare the sheets, and now her shift was pushed up to her waist and her legs were bare, splayed open for me. There was a little dried blood caught in her blonde hair, and I wondered how much would flow out of her and felt my cock leap involuntarily. I had worried all morning if this meant something unpleasant about the workings of my brain, but I pushed that aside.

I started at her waist, and ran my hands slowly over her stomach and hips and the outsides of her thighs. I stroked my fingers gently over her hair, and then parted her lips. It was not very obvious that she was menstruating, or aroused, not yet.

“Sherlock,” she said, with embarrassment and impatience. I looked up.

“Shall I stop?”

“I feel – exposed. You’re being – I don’t know – very clinical.”

“Ah.” I didn’t feel clinical at all.

“Mary?” It was Watson, pushing the door open. He hesitated in the doorway. “Oh. _Oh_.”

“Oh!” said Mary. “Perfect. John, come here and kiss me, and then I won’t feel as odd.” Her hand stroked gently through my hair.

John came as directed, and kissed her, and then said, “What _precisely_ is going on?”

“Sherlock’s making me feel better,” said Mary, a wealth of insinuation in her voice.

“As you like,” said John, kissing her again. “Will it, in fact, make it better?”

“I think it might,” she said. “I certainly don’t object to trying.”

John laughed and reached for Mary’s breast.

I stroked her gently between her legs. She was soft and warm and now growing more than a little wet. I pressed, slightly hesitantly, against the top of her and she pushed her hips against my hand. My fingers slid between her lips and down over her.

I let myself explore her, feeling her grow wetter and wanting her ready before I pushed into her. I tried my hardest to replicate how I remembered John had touched her before, and how she had touched herself watching us. Between the folds of her skin she was dark pink and smeared with redness, gleaming in the light from the window. She whimpered, and I glanced up to see what John was doing.

Mary lay spread out and blushing as John kissed her breasts. Her neck was arched back, but if I sat up I could see where she was biting her lips, her eyes squeezed shut. She smelled warm and extremely arousing, and somehow entirely female.

I bit her thigh – I couldn’t help it, but I gentled her with kisses and licks and she moaned as my fingers thrust into her. I looked up again and my hips shoved against the bed on their own.

I should have undressed earlier. I couldn’t now, with my hands covered in her, but God the restraint was agonizing. I _wanted_ – this wasn’t logical, this wasn’t rational at all, and I didn’t care by now, not when the mere sight of her made me so desperate.

I must finish her quickly, I thought. I was not entirely coherent, even mentally. She was so wet, and flushed pink, and clenching around my fingers. I slid my other hand along her again and rubbed lightly at her clitoris while pressing inside her and she started bucking her hips up from the bed.

She came hard, clamping around my hand and tossing her head, and the noises she made... I could barely manage to keep touching her as she finished, and as soon as she relaxed I pulled away. I pressed one hand against the front of my trousers, not caring anymore about stains, and finished with only that touch.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” said John. I had slumped onto the bed and couldn’t see him, but when I recovered enough to look up he was kissing Mary passionately and she had unfastened his trousers.

“God,” I said. It was almost all I could say.

“Will you – will you do – more?” Mary asked me, and I reached for her again. I’d seen her finish multiple times before, in John’s hands, and now – Christ, now.

She was unbelievably wet. My fingers were shortly covered again, in a mixture of clear and red slickness, and I watched strands of it stretch between my hand and her body when I pulled my fingers gently away from her. She thrust up towards them, moaning into John’s mouth. Her hand was wrapped firmly around his cock, less than a foot away from my face, and all I cared about was the wetness dripping out of her.

I slipped my fingers back into her and rubbed my thumb against her clitoris. “There!” she said, and so I focused on continuing, giving her what she wanted, staying at the same rate. John groaned, and the sound was muffled by her mouth, and she clenched around my fingers and flexed her legs and nearly kicked me and curled up against John’s chest still shivering.

I pulled my hand gently away from her and slumped to the bed just behind her. I’d get up in a minute, I thought. They were talking quietly. The bed shifted and John’s hand landed lightly on my back.

“Sherlock,” he said. “Sit up, love.”

He pulled me gently upright and unbuttoned my shirt. He slid it off my arms, and I was sensible enough to stand and let him finish undressing me. My trousers would not, I thought, be salvageable. Watson rose from the bed and wet a cloth at the basin, then returned with it to clean my hands and groin. He had done up his own trousers at some point. I hadn’t noticed when.

“You liked that?” he asked, wiping the last of the blood off my fingertips.

“Yes,” I said. “Mary – was it -?”

“It was _lovely_ ,” said Mary, stretching out on the bed. She lazily pulled her shift down over herself. “John, there are sponges in the drawer there, would you?”

“Of course,” said John, and Mary hummed and accepted one from him. She was relaxed and calm as she usually was post-coitus, and there was little trace of the tension and discomfort that had been evident before. Another sign she had enjoyed it, if I needed one in addition to her orgasms. She hadn’t gone quite so wild as she did when John was fucking her, though. God, what would that -

“Are _you_ all right?” asked Watson, turning my face gently toward him.

“I’m – not sure,” I admitted. “I hadn’t thought I would be so – so affected by it.”

“Clearly not,” he said, teasing lightly. “Come here.”

He pushed me towards the bed, and climbed on after me. I settled between the two of them. _Two_ , I realized. That was what had been unsettling me, for the last few weeks and before. I had barely thought there was one.


End file.
